videographer | adventurer | search and rescue volunteer

Journey To Moab Update

Last weekend, the members of Peach State Overland present for the Moab trip this past spring were able to get together so we could shoot the interview portion of our upcoming docu-series. It was a long 12hr day, not including setup and take down. Here’s a breakdown of what we did:

Lighting: I ended up doing a 2 light setup with a 500 watt Lowel Omni as the key light on the short side of the face and white bounce disk for the fill on the long camera side of the face. All lights needed a blue gel to try and get close to the fluorescents that lit the rig in the background. I used a Lowel Pro-light in the back for a hair light. All in all, it was probably a bit too dramatic of a look, but it still worked.

Camera/Audio: My friend Ryan Basler ran camera for me, specifically my trusty 60D and newer SL1, while I interviewed and ran audio on the Zoom H4n. We used a Sennheiser wireless lavalier and Audio Technica shotgun mic on a boom for audio.

I think we ended up with roughly 5-6hrs of interview footage to tell the story of the trip. I don’t have a full story arc planned out yet, so I ended up getting everyone to walk me through the trip in their own words. During the edit I will use bits and chunks of various interviews to stitch together a more encompassing trip report. While a lot of the interviews are repetitious, there are unique perspectives and stories that standout. These, I hope, will give some ups and downs to the arc in order to keep people watching.

This is my first attempt at a production of this scale so I’m learning as I go. There is 10 days worth of various footage, candid self-interviews, driving b-roll, landscapes, time-lapses, etc. At least interviews are second nature to me. This fact both worries me and puts me at ease, as I wonder if I could be doing something better…er, different. Maybe asking different questions or doing something different with lighting or camera angles, while still knowing that I can at least knock them out with some proficiency. I’m still wondering how to format it all, 5-10min parts, maybe longer but fewer parts, maybe one long feature.